Fair Stood the Wind for France - Hardcover

H.E. Bates

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0718101308 ISBN 13: 9780718101305

Publisher: Joseph, 1986

Synopsis

H. E. Bates gained his knowledge of rural English life as a country law clerk and sharpened his skills as a provincial journalist. His early short stories, essays, and novels in the 1920s were highly praised, but World War II made Bates famous. Commissioned as a writer for the Royal Air Force in 1941, as "Flying Officer X," he gained great popularity. This World War II story is about a British bomber crew forced down in occupied France.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Treacherous mud clutched at the wheels and the Wellington up-ended. End of mission. The great bomber had been giving the crew trouble since leaving Italy. Finally over occupied France, it settles like a weary, wounded edge on what seemed to Franklin a hard, smooth field.

The five members of the crew, already closely bound together that even conversation was seldom necessary, were welded by the crash into a single whole, one tiny forged weapon in the vast territory of the enemy -- weak and ineffectual yet confident as only men can be whose minds are free.

Francoise's family accepted them calmly. In Francoise it was faith, a simple piety so humble, so complete that all the mechanized myrmidons of the Reich could not touch her spirit. In her father it was stubbornness, that glorious pigheadedness of the French peasant who won't be pushed around. In her grandmother it was a kinship with the infinite. Having survived two wars, she remained unmoved by the swaggering vainglory of the Nazi. And in Pierre it was hatred, a hatred so deep that only rarely did it flash on the surface.

It was natural that Francoise should be so strongly drawn to Franklin, the pilot. His gentle strength, his sensitive mind, the careful restrained warmth of his emotion found a calm, sure response in the simple innocence and candor of the girl. All through the delirious pain of his torn, wounded arm, Franklin felt the girl's presence like a cool, comforting hand. In the end it was her courage and, above all, her faith which saved him -- saved him not only from the enemy but from himself.

About the Author:

H. E. Bates (1905-1974) was born in Rushden, Northamptonshire. Before becoming a writer, he worked as a reporter and a warehouse clerk. He is best known for his works Love for Lydia, The Darling Buds of May, and My Uncle Silas, all of which have been adapted for television or film.

About this edition

• Publisher: Joseph
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0718101308
• ISBN 13: 9780718101305
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 1